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Since God is the one infinite Cause, man, His spiritual offspring, His reflection, must be effect. The Bible uses the terms “image” and “likeness” to convey this idea. Man shows forth, or reflects, what God is. He is God’s beloved child, male and female, created to express and glorify his Father-Mother. Since God is the one all-knowing Mind, man possesses and reflects unlimited intelligence, understanding, and wisdom. He is the manifestation of all that Mind includes, the conscious recognition and acknowledgment of Mind’s allness. Because the Bible reveals God as Soul, the one infinite individuality, we know that man has no individuality or identity separate from God, but includes by reflection all that constitutes the divine identity. This individuality is purely spiritual because God is Spirit, and man is His likeness. Since Spirit is the one true substance, man always expresses the unlimited variety and abundance of Spirit’s ideas, — an inexhaustible resource indeed. Since God is the one and only Life, man, His likeness, must be eternal. He does not have a separate, independent life apart from God, but is the conscious evidence of Life’s ever-present, eternal existence. God’s man is the spiritual likeness of Truth. He is the image of all that constitutes reality, the conscious manifestation of everything that is true about his Maker. He is the precious offspring of divine Love, tenderly embraced and protected within God’s infinite goodness and abundantly provided for through all eternity. This is the only man there ever was, and you are this man. Part of Jesus’ mission on earth as our Savior was to reveal this fact, to illustrate its tremendous practicality in healing, and to demonstrate the power of truth in such a way as to spiritualize forever the way men think about themselves and their relationship to God. His insistence that we must be “born again”, as recorded in John’s Gospel, is a call to reject the old notion of our mortal ancestry and human origin for the more spiritually enlightened view that God is our Father, and that we are His spiritual and immortal offspring. Hence his admonition, “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”, (Matt. 23:9). Paul echoes this thought. In Chapter Nine of the book of Romans he states, “They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God.” This spiritual fact is even more clearly articulated in his second letter to the Corinthians. There he insists, (II Cor. 5:16-17), “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God.” Course Steps Home Step Four |